1st Forum on the Rights of Nature ends in success

The Tlatelolco University Cultural Center where the foundation of an ancient indigenous temple, destroyed by colonists, can still be seen, was the site of a historic event: The 1st Forum on the Rights of Nature. International representatives, activists, and indigenous community members ratified the United Nations of the Spirit and shared strategic and legal ideas about the fight for the Rights of Mother Earth.

Among participants

Ati Quigua – Arhuaco Indigenous Leader

Her message reminds us that we’re seeds and that seeds are our spiritual symbol, because “meals do not only nourish our physical body, but also our heart, our dreams, our consciousness, and we want happy meals, we want them to be cultivated with love and that’s why I’m joining here, with my sister from India, Vandana, our voices are uniting for the native seed”.

Cesar D. Madruga – Mexican Deputy who Kickstarted the Law of Mother Earth in his Home Country.

“Mexico needs a new generation of rights. A transcendental step is no longer seeing Earth as an object rather seeing it for what is it, a living being in which we, allow me, are an integrative cell of this great living system.

The ideal would be acting as the citizens that support this legislation and begin applying it, but not just that, that we make it a part of our culture and bring it to the everyday level. We’re not talking about the human right of breathing in fresh air anymore, we’re talking about the air’s right to live free of contamination. Every time we look for the air’s right to live cleanly, governments should make the effort to maintain it clean, and make sure that it doesn’t become a political crisis for governments. As a society we can all do it, government and society, we can find solutions to be able to guard the Rights of Mother Earth”.

Leonardo Boff – Brazilian Theologian, Philosopher, and Ecologist

“There are originary tribes that have maintained that the Earth is not a trunk of resources, but that Earth is Pachamama, the great mother that gives us everything we need. We have to revisit them and listen to them because this conception tells us that Earth is threatened, super exploited, and that it can’t take anymore. They teach us that. They ask that we be present for the world crisis it’s the indigenous leaders that are mistreated by cultures”.

Dra. Vandana Shiva – Hindu Physicist

The Human Rights crisis is related to the environmental crisis. When your land and your way of earning a living snatched away, your identity changes. Identifies are fragmented and they become negative, and you start identifying more with what you’re not, than with what you are.

Reclaiming our identity as citizens of earth is great challenge, and that’s why I’m very happy that the Forum on the Rights of Earth include human rights.

Rights of Nature are the foundation of Human Rights and they can’t be separated.

The defense of Mother Earth is not a part time affair, it’s full time.

Paramadvaiti Swami – Co-founder of the World Conscious Pact

“This is something incredible, now ancestral peoples have gone from being considered our equals to becoming our inspiration. Ancestral wisdom is categorized as something that we should know, something we shouldn’t ignore. Here in Mexico, this is great meeting in which the entire world sees this work (The United Nations of the Spirit) in a positive light, so that along with representatives from all over the planet, we proliferate consciousness for the Rights of Mother Earth, for the rights that we can only obtain if we spiritually embrace one another, as a big family before our living Father and Mother…This is divine growth, we grow as human beings and we unite today and forever”.

Luis Raúl González Pérez – President of the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH)

“It’s necessary to raise awareness that whoever damages the environment damages themselves and others, and future generations. Development depends on the capacity that we have to care for the Earth.

If we don’t respect the Earth, we don’t respect ourselves as humans, which implies the existence of a healthy environment. The generation of change will bring us to a shift in paradigm, we’ve left knowledge aside to take a step toward ignorance, greed, and ambition, we need a change to protect ourselves as humans, as part of everything. Human beings make up part of all that is Mother Earth”.

Manuel Granados – Juridic Adviser Mexico City.

“Mexico City has given big step with the draft Rights of Mother Earth. In the framework of the creation of the first constitution of Mexico City appear essential to develop the defense mechanisms of rights, clean air without pollution, water protection. Taking into account local and global experiences for the implementation of the law and debate. Regulatory mechanisms. The aim is to make a constitution vanguard”.

Inauguration ceremony of the Forum for the Rights of Nature

Candidio Mezua, Embera region of Panama

Mumta Ito

Chucho Merchan and Dr. Vandana Shiva.

René Casas sharing material at the forum’s information table.

Mandari – Sapara tribe of Ecuador

Work table on the ethical, philosophical, and spiritual principles of the Rights of Nature